14 DAY TRIAL // Honey Boo Boo and her family, including the controversial Mama June and her estranged partner Sugar Bear, will be back on television, after an unexpected hiatus caused by the pedophile scandal Mama June got herself involved in.
TLC, home of the family for years, pulled the plug on their successful show, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, just as production on season 5 was nearing the end. Those episodes will never air, but the fam is yet to kiss their TV career goodbye.
The rise and fall of Mama June
The reason TLC canceled the show was that Mama June, the matriarch, was confirmed to have rekindled the romance with one of her exes, Mark McDaniel, who had just been released from prison after serving a 10-year sentence on child molestation charges.
Later on, word would get out that the child he’d molested was Mama June’s own daughter, Chickadee, who was only 8 at the time. Mama June never believed her and she continued to see the man even after the story broke.
When she finally understood that she’d been caught and there was nothing to do to get out of the nasty position she’d put herself in, she tried to lie about the whole thing. Even later, realizing that this wasn’t working, she tried to do some damage control: she apologized and reconciled with her estranged ex, Honey Boo Boo’s father.
By that time, it had already become clear that she wasn’t the loving and considerate mother she’d come across on TV, but a monster who put her own children in danger by reconnecting with a man who had admitted to forcing himself onto her daughter.
The clan is in LA to meet with network executives
However, it seems that her attempts at cleaning up her image have worked to a certain extent, because TV executives are itching to work with her. Since she and the family aren’t tied to TLC anymore, a bidding war is now being waged with the purpose of securing them for a new reality show, TMZ reports.
The entire family is now in Los Angeles, where they will be meeting with industry people to talk about the possibility of a new series. “The idea being shopped is a ‘Beverly Hillbillies’ theme with a new house, money, and drivers while they adjust to being famous around town,” the report says.
Negotiations are stalling right now because the same executives are trying to get Mama June to do two things she doesn’t want to for the premiere: talk about the McDaniel situation and how it affected the family, and try to work things out with Sugar Bear because, apparently, the public loves nothing more than a good reconciliation story.
How much controversy is too much?
Another thing that these executives must also be considering is how much controversy is too much. It’s a well-known fact that controversy and scandal sells better than positive media attention, but this kind of negative attention that Mama June has been receiving (with good reason) is unprecedented.
She didn’t just cheat or get drunk and cause a ruckus in public, or whatever it is that celebrities do to get the “scandal” stories going, she crossed the line way into “Hell no!” territory by dating a convicted sexual predator.
This is not something that you can come back from, or at least, it was never done before. Apparently though, these execs believe that Mama June is interesting enough for the public to keep tuning in even though they despise her. We’ll see about that.